Jeff Teasdale (8th Nov)

Our guest tonight was Jeff Teasdale. Jeff is a member of Durham Photographic Society and is a keen landscape/seascape photographer. Jeff’s talk tonight was entitled ‘Seeing & Making Images From The Landscape’.

Jeff began by explaining how his love of photography started early when he moved with his parents to the Northumberland countryside when aged around seven.  The rugged beauty of the landscape and watching films such as ‘ Whiskey Galore’ inspired Jeff to pick up a camera.
 Jeff gave up his teaching position and became a full time landscape photographer.

 Jeff believes there are three elements to a successful image. Pre-production, Production & Post Production. Pre-production, or in other words, planning for Jeff involves taking inspiration from past & present masters of photographic art from his not to insignificant library on the subject including Joe Cornish, Ansel Adams and many others. His library also includes books on Japanese art & artists, a passion of Jeff’s.

 Production then follows in using the inspiration gathered to find a location suitable that would not always be grand vistas but often close up shots, such as trees showing the texture in the bark and the tangle & shapes formed by their roots.  Jeff uses all the visual elements of a captured image to relate ‘what a photo says about me’
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 In Post Production although using both Lightroom & Photoshop and utilising multiple layers Jeff prefers to keep the time editing an image to minimum, usually less than 10 minutes. Using an image taken at Hodge Close, a disused slate quarry in the Lake District Jeff showed his post production workflow, using layers to alter both colour & saturation to achieve a subtle & pleasing final image.

 Jeff is also a keen advocate of ‘pinhole’ camera photography and showed what pleasing results could be achieved from this simple technology. Jeff also showed images taken with a cheap wooden medium format camera & the results from a mirrorless camera converted to infrared.

 Jeff has exhibited in Middlesbrough & is involved in a project showing the Resurgence of Teesside and has produced several ‘Blurb’  photo books,

 At the end of the evening Jeff received the thanks of the members for an informative & enjoyable presentation before answering questions from the floor.
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 Bob Finlay (President)